Fashionable and Practical
As good as that belt (?) is for Fighter’s build, there are some additional considerations at play. For example, does it make his butt look big? Can the rest of the party stomach the smell? Can a necromancer animate the thing? That last one is especially important from a called shot to the nuts standpoint. Undead fish flopping around at crotch height are a surefire way to the sickened condition.
As a writer type guy, I’ve got to admit that I’m not so great with the whole visual imagery thing. The last wizard I played wore an enchanted helmet. This thing was made by dwarves, and it allowed him to teleport through stone a couple times per day. Great item, right? It was big and bulky and made of stone, but it worked a treat. Underneath this I also wore a ruby headband. And on top of my other cranial accouterments I wore my usual pointy wizard hat, because what kind of wizard doesn’t have a pointy hat? Sure I had to tie it on with string, but arcane tradition demands no less. Any dang way, it was only when I tried to sweet talk the High Magister of Lastwall (a smokin’ hot gold dragon bloodline sorceress) that my GM actually pointed my appearance out to me. Suffice it to say that I failed to win the affections of said sorceress.
More recently I ran into this issue with a buddy’s witch PC. There are plenty of cool items for the build. The corset of dire witchcraft, the witching gown, and the cackling hag’s blouse are all great magical doodads. I’m just not sure they’ll look so hot on a dude.
How about you guys? Ever find a powerful item that didn’t quite fit your character concept?
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I’ve usually found asking “can it looks like X instead so it doesn’t clash” to work pretty well as far as visual appearance. That said, this in no way stops GMs from handing me items that don’t fit the character simply because of what they actually do.
The worst I’ve encountered isn’t actually an item, but an ability. In Exalted there’s a thing called “Ox Body” that basically says “you must take this to not die.” The problem is that you wind up with magical kung fu girls with something called “Ox Body” on the character sheet. Doesn’t quite fit the concept, you know?
I have a serious problem with Exalted. Not the kind of problem people might expect.
My issue is that I just want to shout “DEATH OF OBSIDIAN BUTTERFLIES!” at pretty much all times. It makes if very hard to focus on a proper character concept or making a mechanically viable character. =P
So I guess that’s kind of the reverse of the posed question. *shrug*
#FirstAgeProblems
This actually made me laugh so hard I cried.
BTW, if you’re an Exalted dude, you might want to check out Laurel’s other comic. It’s in a different style and with another author, but I think you’ll dig it: http://www.neverborncomic.com/
I’m pretty sure that’s how I got here in the first place. I just don’t comment there because I’m actually not super knowledgeable of exalted. Basically I understand it just enough to enjoy said comic. Which is indeed quite enjoyable.
Ehhh. As someone who really first got into tabletop via Exalted (started in the dying days of First Ed., spent most of my time playing Second Ed.) the fact that the charm’s full name is ‘Ox-Body Technique’ always meant it didn’t bother me too much. Depending on how you look at it it’s either a mystical enhancement to your character’s body, or you can style the learning of it as more of a martial technique, where you know how to brace yourself and stand to take and deflect incoming blows, mechanically giving you the effect of increased health. But my table always took the Autochthonian approach: “just because a charm’s default flavor text describes it a certain way doesn’t mean that’s how it looks or works when installed (used) by your character. If the charm says it does extra damage by coating your limbs in essence-lightning but you’d prefer a pair of sonic amplifiers that literally vibrates the enemy apart then whatever change you want is fine as long as the mechanics themselves are the same. The only real effect from changing the visual is that it changes what kind of stunts your character might be able to pull off.”
For magic items… If you’re PC is getting them custom made (either doing it themselves or commissioning an NPC) then within limits I’m fine customizing the appearance, and a certain amount of resizing and customizing of magic items to fit the character happens automatically with magic equipment in most of my worlds, but if you find loot in the wild you’ve gotta deal with the looks not necessarily fitting your aesthetique™, on the other hand, paying a magic item craftsman to make it fit your look (or doing it yourself with the right feats and skills) is also totally fine and costs nowhere near as much as paying them to make one wholesale. But that’s just how I run things.
Heh, its a “cod”piece
This guy gets it!
It may amuse you to know, however, that this comic features scroll-over text. 🙂
Not on mobile it doesn’t.
(Which. Fair. I didn’t even know I was missing out till I saw comments on it and double-checked.)
In our group we handle magic items not like “written in stone”. So when an item just does not fit your style we allow alot of redesign into something that fits better. For example we allow “vests of protection” instead of “cloak of protection” just because every group would roughly look the same if you are going to find/buy/make your typical adventurer’s set of magic items. But we do have some restrictions. For example a “cloak of resistance” could not become a “left sock of resistance”. It has to use the body slot it was meant to be in. Other then that only your imagination and skill in “haggle with the GM” are the limits. 🙂
Another thing we adopted was a variant rule from RPGbot the enhancement tattoos. So you could get all your basic stuff tattooed on your body to open up literally space to experiment with lesser used magic items you’d otherwise would have to combine ever further and ever more costly if you had to combine them with your “cloak of resistance” for example. Yes it makes you a little more powerful in the long run. But at least our group was more often then not on the slightly more powerful side anyway so that did not change much.
I may give it too much weight, but I always keep the Altering Existing Magic Items warning from Pathfinder 1e in mind:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/Magic-Item-Creation/#Altering_Existing_Magic_Items
I think that cloaks of resistance are a good target for redistribution though. It bugs me no end that, in 3.X, you’re pretty much obliged to get one rather than some kind of fun cloak. To that end, I like to use the ‘adding new abilities’ rules on cloaks of resistance:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/Magic-Item-Creation/#Adding_New_Abilities
It lets you keep a reasonable bonus to your saves while experimenting with different shoulder-slot items, and balances by asking you to pay a premium for the privilege.